Mrs Parr's Gargoyle
by Swallowraven
Summary: She spies something inhuman on the roof, and can't tell if it's performance art or a living gargoyle, but it's a nice distraction. Also, its feet are filthy and she hopes to god that thing is only a tail. A romance. Really.
1. Chapter 1

I make no profits from writing about the Ninja Turtles.

I owe a huge thanks to the awesome Deirdre for the beta read and all the insight and advice, and for her support and faith in a project about which I had a hundred uncertainties.

**Mrs. Parr's Gargoyle**

Against the backdrop of darkness, the glow of the lamp on the end table turned Mrs. Parr's window into a mirror. She caught sight of her reflection as she shuffled over to switch it off for the night. Her face hovered above the lamp shade, the illumination from below casting pockets of shadow under her eyes and in her sagging skin, and highlighting the deep lines running from the corners of her mouth to her nose and down either side of her chin in thick, black strokes. The effect made her look, she decided, not older than she was, but rather exactly as old as she was. Although she never cared to acknowledge it, she always felt a bit disgruntled when caught unaware by her own reflection. A small jolt of surprise and peevish disappointment ran under her skin, as if she had, against all reason and common sense, expected to find a younger version of herself looking back.

Irritated with herself, the impromptu mirror, and all harsh white light bulbs, she switched off the lamp. The displeasing reflection winked out - the window no longer a mirror but an ordinary window again, offering a view of the neighboring building's roof. From Mrs. Parr's window, the sight was as immediate and intimate as looking into one's own backyard. Her apartment stood at the same level as the other building's roof, and the alley separating them was so narrow that she might have been able to spit across to the other side, if she had had any practice at spitting.

On the roof, Mrs. Parr saw something inhuman moving and whirling with furious, reckless energy.

She stared blankly for a few moments, puzzled, as her mind tried to match up what she saw with any sort of man or animal she knew. Failing that, a surge of fearful adrenalin flooded her nerves - the instinct to flee from this thing or cower before its violent movements. But she stood as if rooted to the spot, the backs of her knees tight and trembling, one hand anxiously pulling and twisting on the fingers of the other, not knowing what to do and unable to look away.

A single bulb, encaged in protective wire, shone from atop a doorway to the building's stairs. The creature flashed into the pool of light the bulb threw and out again, over and over - its body now briefly illuminated, now dark as a bat against the shadows, and quicker, and just as erratic in its movements. And Mrs. Parr watched, stunned and thrilled and frightened.

The thing seemed to be fighting an invisible enemy. It lashed out viciously. It leapt and dodged with impossible swiftness, at times faster than her eyes could track it. She caught brief, stark glimpses of a broad body, plated and armored, indisputably green. She saw weapons twirl in its hands, but the creature would volley back into darkness before she could make out what they were. Once in darkness, the creature was just an indistinct, violent dervish of a shadow. Of the enemy it seemed to be fighting so desperately, she could see nothing.

It occurred to her that the creature might be mad, or rabid. It no doubt was dangerous. She wondered if perhaps she should call animal control…but no, that was a stupid idea. She couldn't imagine what animal control, with their small nets and catchpoles, could achieve against this thing. In any case, the fact that it carried weapons indicated that it had more than an animal's intelligence

She should call the police, and…and tell them what? There was crazed monster on the roof? They would laugh at her. No, give them a white lie. There was an intruder on the roof, or better yet, two men fighting. Then let the police deal with whatever they found and figure out what it was.

The creature burst into the pool of light and launched into a mighty leap, remaining airborne for far longer than any creature without actual wings had any right to be, finishing off with a furious, crushing kick that apparently vanquished the unseen enemy. It stood still a moment, legs spread in a heroic stance, one hand fisted on its hip, the other pointing to something invisible lying at its feet. Its mouth moved as if saying something to his beaten foe.

Then, to Mrs. Parr's utter astonishment, the creature took a bow.

It turned about, bowing to all four points of the compass and then some. It raised its arms in triumph to receive the thundering acclaim of an imaginary audience. It smiled and waved. It even went as far as blowing a few kisses.

She had no idea what to make of it.

All that ferocious effort and the creature, for whatever reason, had been merely playacting. It suddenly occurred to Mrs. Parr that perhaps she was watching an exceptionally agile and elaborately made up man rehearsing some sort of performance art. That, she thought with a relieved feeling of sanity being restored to the world, actually made quite a lot of sense. As such, the green monster would not even qualify as the most bizarre thing she had ever seen in her life.

She remembered once, years ago, she had gone to see something described as "a provocative piece of performance art." A young woman, dressed in ragged but pricey layers of black silk, had taken a hypodermic needle and, puncturing her forearm, had filled it with blood from her own vein. The girl had then tilted her head back and squirted the hypo's contents back into her eyes, letting it run down her face like the streaks of tears. Of the small audience, some had looked thoughtful, some disdainfully amused, and some merely looked bored. No one had looked shocked. Mrs. Parr had wondered if the girl could get herself arrested for something like that – there should be some kind of law about mutilating yourself with hypodermics.

Compared to that, a man in green make up and an artificial shell was hardly worth noting. Her fears began to dissipate, replaced by simple bewilderment and a growing, powerful curiosity. Now that it lingered in the light, she got a better look at it. It was like a turtle in form. Or maybe tortoise was a better word, since it was on dry land. At least, it had a shell on its back and chest plates like a tortoise or turtle, but it stood up straight and had arms and legs like a man – a very muscular man. The domed head, however, and the very broad cheeks and jaw looked like nothing she knew.

The creature had two wooden weapons tucked into a thick leather belt. Kung-fu weapons - she had once known what they were called, but she couldn't find the word now. She had seen them in a Bruce Lee movie. She remembered with sudden, startling clarity going to a late night showing in Times Square of Enter the Dragon when it was first released. She recalled most of the audience smoking enthusiastically throughout the movie and no one trying to stop them - the management either unwilling to challenge the rowdy midnight crowd or not caring. Mrs. Parr had lit one up herself and through a haze of smoke watched Bruce Lee wielding the exact same weapons. Strange, she could remember that but could not recall whom she had been with.

The turtle-tortoise-man wore a mask around his eyes, like Zorro, but unlike Zorro he had bypassed somber black in favor of bright, insouciant orange. Mrs. Parr couldn't imagine the point of the mask. It wasn't like a strip of cloth could do anything to disguise the identity of a being that looked more or less like a gargoyle come to life. Maybe the mask was intended to be ironically humorous, a joke he had with himself. Or maybe, if he was indeed a performance artist, it was some kind of symbolic statement on the nebulous nature of identity. Or something. Who knew what went through the minds of performance artists.

He had now apparently had enough of bowing to his imaginary audience. He bounded to the door and flung himself down with as much energy as he has used to fling himself around the roof. He sat under the light bulb with his back to the door and snatched up some kind of writing tablet or sketchbook by his side and began rapidly flipping through the pages.

When she was sure he intended to stay put a few minutes, Mrs. Parr left the window. Feeling her way carefully through the dark apartment, she went to the hall closet and rummaged around on the upper shelf, emerging with a pair of binoculars. The tortoise-man was still there after she felt her way back to the window. He looked to be sketching something, though the book was at the wrong angle for her to see what it was. Feeling herself very reckless and daring, and not in the least bit guilty for spying, she trained the binoculars on him.

At close range it became obvious that he was no man in a costume, but real. Once again, Mrs. Parr's sense of rightness and sanity in the world rocked wildly. His broad jaw and cheeks were not, after all, the result of prosthetic makeup, but living, malleable flesh. He poked his tongue against the inside of his cheek, making the skin bulge. The pink tip made an appearance out the corner of his wide mouth. She could not discern anything at all on the green head that passed for ears.

She panned the binoculars down his body, noting the subtle variations in the tone of his green skin, of the colors of his shell, variegated shades of green through brown. What she could see of the shell had a hard used look about it, like old, battered armor. He appeared as if he had been banged up some in his life. The prominent muscles on his arms and legs bore several impressive scars, ridged and pale against the surrounding skin, as if he had been gashed with a butcher knife on more than one occasion. Her instinctive reaction to the sight was pity, though it occurred to her that perhaps he had been the aggressor rather than the victim and had brought his scars on himself.

The creature shifted position, drawing up one knee to rest the sketchbook on it. She caught sight of some other appendage between his legs – a tail or another, more private part of his anatomy, though she hoped to God it was only a tail. Whatever it was, it squirmed like a slug and then came to rest stretched out along his inner thigh. She shuddered in revulsion and quickly looked elsewhere, settling her attention on his feet, which were large with two long dexterous toes on each and were, she noted with a curl of distaste in her throat, quite filthy.

What a strange, unaccountable creature - this scarred and grimy monster, apparently possessing artistic tendencies - this freakish hybrid of man and animal, plainly no stranger to violence, aggressive and brutally swift even in play. She had no frame of reference for something like this except for half remembered fantasy stories from childhood, and even then she had known none of it was real. But this – this was real, this was fantasy made flesh, as grotesque as trolls in the sewers, as marvelous as griffins in Central Park. Mrs. Parr was left with the uncomfortable realization that the world she had lived in for more than seventy years was not at all what she had thought.

After about a half an hour, the creature paused in his sketching, stretched and leapt to his feet. He tucked the sketchbook under his arm and without warning ran to the edge of the roof and jumped off. Mrs. Parr nearly screamed. A notion flashed into her head that all that sketching had been some sort of suicidal epigram and his previous activity had been the manic, last minute burst of energy of someone in the last stages of depression, and he now intended to hurl himself to his death. But even before the thought could finish forming, he landed safely on the far roof, throwing in an exuberant flip after he landed for good measure, and kept running. In seconds he was out of sight.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Mrs. Parr woke the next morning full of news of the creature, but with no one to tell, even if she had been inclined to tell anyone. In daylight she felt no fear at all, just a buoyant excitement from all she had seen the night before. She practically vibrated with delicious, secret knowledge. She put water on for coffee, and then, because she could not sit still, set about dusting her small apartment, turning everything over in her mind as she worked.

She settled on calling the tortoise creature a gargoyle. The creature was an impossibility anyway, and she decided that this was just as likely as any other impossible theory. She recalled reading as a child a story about the gargoyles and stone statuary of New York quickening to life at night under certain conditions. She could not remember any of the plot or what those conditions were, although she did recall that the great lions standing guard outside the public library had played a large role. It made a certain amount of sense to think of him as a gargoyle. He had seemed very much in his natural environment, disengaged from whatever high and dizzying corner he had been affixed to, obviously at home among the rooftops and the empty air between them. The only thing that troubled her was his lack of wings. Weren't wings a prerequisite for gargoyles? She could not be sure. She knew nothing about the subject.

She considered the possibility that he might be an alien from another planet, and then quickly dismissed it. An alien that looked remarkably like an earth tortoise and practiced kung fu was not only impossible, it was silly.

Maybe he was some sort of demon, rebelling against hell and in search of redemption from the long ago fall? Or a creature from fairie - a goblin, a gnome, somehow transplanted from the ancient, dark forests of Europe to modern Manhattan? Some kind of scientific experiment? She knew that scientists had cloned a sheep before. Maybe they had moved on, and were now mixing the genes of men and animals.

And the gargoyle had been created in a laboratory, maybe as a military experiment to make powerful, expendable soldiers, the scientists working in secret and racing against their enemies in the manner of the atomic bomb. That would explain the scars, the fighting skill, and his form - an animal chosen for its naturally armored body and given human intelligence and more than human agility and strength. He had been studied, tested, prodded, forced to fight for his life to test his limits, until finally he had revolted, he and others like him, from confinement and slavery, escaping to the bowels of the city to live on the edges of humanity in desperate secrecy, but free. The more she thought about it, the more logical it seemed, and the more the plausibility of it all annoyed her. She found the idea of living gargoyles more appealing.

The sound of her buzzer startled her from her thoughts. She stalked over to her intercom, wondering irritably who the hell it could be. She didn't want to be bothered with visitors right now. When the voice at the other end gave her a cheerful greeting and said it was Denise, the name at first meant nothing to her. She stood at a loss, anxiously searching her oddly locked and uncooperative memory for a place where someone named Denise resided. It took until the buzzer sounded a second time for recognition to come. Oh of course, Denise, from Meals on Wheels. She quickly buzzed the other woman in. She should have known who it was right away. It could have been no one else, really.

Denise had first started visiting a year ago, when Mrs. Parr had been confined to her apartment with a broken hip. She disliked thinking about the accident. Such a stupid thing to happen! So…common. An old lady slipping on the bathroom floor. A cliché – "Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!" A statistic – "More accidents happen in the bathroom than in any other room in the house." So stupid of her. She had crawled to the phone for help, in such pain that she had actually passed out a couple of times. Later, she could feel embarrassed about it - the stereotype of the feeble old woman she had made of herself. But then, there had been only pain, fear that she would not make it to the phone, and determination coming in intermittent, wild bursts that she must make it or die alone in her own bathroom.

Denise had continued visiting after the hip had healed out of kindness, realizing that Mrs. Parr had no other company. She came twice a week or more, to talk over coffee, often bringing groceries, or a new book, checking in and checking up. Anything you need? How's the hip?

She always stayed long enough for politeness, but not long enough for real friendship. Mrs. Parr could see the pity in her, the compassion than true interest, but she mostly did not mind. Denise had good intentions, and Mrs. Parr liked having someone to have coffee with. She like listening to her low, bedrock steady voice, the voice of someone who could take on other people's burdens without twitching a muscle. She liked the way her smooth brown cheeks would plump further when she smiled – no wrinkles yet on her, though she was no longer really young herself.

After a few minutes of conversation, Denise noticed the binoculars sitting on the end table and teasingly asked Mrs. Parr if she had taking up spying on the neighbors.

"Oh, heh, no, no," Mrs. Parr said, trying to think of a reasonable excuse. "I just had them out. They used to be Malcolm's. They just remind me of him sometimes…You talk about spying. _He's_ the one who used to spy on the neighbors! Bought them after he retired, said he's gonna take up bird watching in the park. Bird watching. Bird watching my ass! He used them to spy on the neighbors. Used to drive me crazy. 'Put those away,' I said, 'before someone calls the cops!'"

Denise laughed; a deep, melodic sound. "Yeah, you told me he used to do that."

"He used to sit right at that window and look out at the next building. I said, 'Put those away.' Drove me nuts."

Mrs. Parr's mind wandered helplessly back to Malcolm as Denise began to talk of other things. He had eventually given in to her wishes and given up his hobby. Over time - though not a very great length of time - he gradually became enthroned permanently on the couch, watching TV and allowing the outside world to fade from his notice as retirement wore on. Mrs. Parr had fed him and cleaned around him and let him be. By that time she had stopped caring what he did as long as he didn't get himself in trouble. Although their marriage had never turned to bitterness or hate, it had faded over time like old denim worn and washed and used too often. They had gradually lost interest in each other after finding out everything there was to know, and even well before his retirement Mrs. Parr had found herself living a life parallel, but no longer united, to his.

She had stayed with him out of habit and for comfort. She suspected that he had probably done the same. He had never been bad to her, and they had never fought too terribly. He had been company, another body in the house and, as their circle of friends passed on, moved away, or simply stopped visiting, he had helped keep loneliness at bay. She had known plenty of people for whom that would have been more than enough, whose lives had been made a living hell by their own spouses, and for those reasons she had remained genuinely fond of him and had sincerely grieved his passing.

The sound of glass breaking in the kitchen caused both women to break off – Denise from her chatting and Mrs. Parr from her drifting thoughts – and look up in alarm. Mrs. Parr's immediate thought was that someone had thrown a rock through her window. She followed in Denise's wake as the other woman strode purposefully towards the kitchen and pulled up short in the doorway, her bulk blocking Mrs. Parr's view.

"Oh, don't come in, Mrs. Parr, there's glass all over the floor. It's your kettle; you left the burner on with no water in it. The heat shattered the glass. Here, you go back and sit down. I'll get this cleaned up."

Mrs. Parr walked as if in a daze back to the couch. The sound of pieces of glass clinking together mingled with Denise's voice while she swept up the mess. "These electric burners get so hot. The same thing happened to my sister once, you know. She turned the wrong burner on to heat some water then went and did something else and forgot about it. Ended up heating this empty casserole dish sitting on the stove instead of the water. Half an hour later the whole thing shatters into a million pieces from the heat. So, don't worry, you're not the first!"

Mrs. Parr heard the remains of her kettle being dumped into the trash. " Now don't come in here barefoot for a while. I think I got it all, but there might be a little piece here and there. I'll get you new kettle, one with a whistle so you can hear when the water boils – Oh, Mrs. Parr, don't cry, it's just a kettle, no harm done. I'll get you a new one, it's no trouble."

"It's just," Mrs. Parr began, "I had that kettle – " she stopped a moment, unable to continue, and then tried again. "My mother gave it to me when I had my first apartment."

She couldn't convey what the kettle meant, its importance all out of proportion with its actual value. It had been old – the oldest thing she owned. She remembered watching her mother boil water with when she was a child. She had liked that the kettle was glass, liked being able to see through the sides and watch the water slowly coming to a boil, the almost hypnotic effect of the bubbles rising from the bottom of the kettle to burst through the surface of the water in an endless stream.

She met Denise's eyes, and it was as if she was looking through a long, narrow tunnel with herself and memory at one end and Denise, far away and unable to touch it or really understand, at the other. She saw the other woman settle on the couch and prepare to comfort her with more patience than willingness. It was past the time when she usually ended her visits. For a moment Mrs. Parr hated her, with her pity and her sense of obligation. And a moment later she felt guilty. It wasn't Denise's fault. She shouldn't waste her visitor's time crying over an old kettle that would cost two dollars at a second hand store. Denise had a life of her own to tend to.

Mrs. Parr forced herself to stop crying and let the other woman off the hook. She told her with all the spirit she could muster that yes, it wasn't that important, she'd be awfully glad to get a new one, thank you so much for taking care of it, thanks as usual for stopping by, and goodbye now.

After the door had shut, Mrs. Parr took up Malcolm's binoculars to return them to the closet, but instead she found herself in the kitchen, looking into the wastebasket at the remains of her kettle. Cradling the binoculars against her belly, her eyes welled up again, her tears dripping down onto the pieces of glass. She stood and wept, feeling rather stupid, not even sure for what she was mourning.

………………………………………………………………………………………………

When the gargoyle appeared again that night, he arrived as a welcome distraction. Here was something completely new in the world. Here was something that was unconnected either to an increasingly faulty memory or a clear memory that brought no pleasure. Here was something that could replace, even if for a little while, the past she seemed to keep losing. He could fill her mind. She went eagerly for the binoculars.

He was drawing again, and she had plenty of time to study him as he sat relatively still. She ran the binoculars over his body again and again, fascinated with how he was put together, that such a thing could be flesh and bone. She watched him breathe, his sides swelling gently in and out, the armored chest slightly rising and falling. How much could that shell weigh? It seemed like it should pull the skin right off his back, so it must be somehow fused to his bones. How much strength did it take to carry it around? His muscles bulged with latent power even as the gargoyle sat at ease. She became distracted for a time with his arms, watching the interplay of bicep and triceps as they flexed at the slightest excuse – flipping a page, switching pencils.

She wondered what brought him here. There was nothing charming or interesting about her neighborhood. It was not a good neighborhood, nor was it was not the worst in the city. Over the past few years, Mrs. Parr had occasionally heard news that Lower Manhattan was becoming increasingly 'gentrified.' If certain sources were to be believed, the whole Lower East Side was now nothing but pricey loft apartments and boutiques for trendy, successful artistic types and upscale professionals. The movement had yet to show any signs of arriving this far south of Houston Street. Not far from her building was an enormous, sprawling housing project, the dingy grey buildings looking more like a prison than residences. Around the corner from her stood one of the last of the old flophouses, which had somehow escaped demolition, the landlords still scratching out an existence by letting slummy rooms for a few dollars a night. She hated the flophouse, with its collection of addicts and mentally ill, and the lost, defeated, and irrecoverably down on their luck - men who were themselves scratching out an existence one last gasp away from outright homelessness. Men with nothing left to lose would take what they could from a woman alone. Even in the days when she had gone out more, she had avoided the flophouse, as well as the project, where the men were less beaten down and more active, more aggressively predatory. Maybe the gargoyle was one of those sensitive types who enjoyed documenting squalor.

He still looked like he could use a bath. She wondered if he smelled bad. She wondered if turning to stone had a repelling effect on the on the dirt he acquired in the flesh, or if it was the opposite. Maybe the grime accumulated on his stone form transferred onto his fleshy self. She wondered if he had to scrape bird droppings off himself every time he turned to flesh. She wondered if he ate, and what. _Oh god_, she thought suddenly, _pigeons!_ Maybe he snapped up an unsuspecting pigeon in his jaws after he turned to flesh, blood spurting and stray feathers floating around his head as its bones and entrails were crushed, the skin bitten through…she gagged a little and halted that train of thought.

She watched his face for a while, studying his shifting expressions. A small frown as he concentrated on some tricky part; a narrowing of the eyes, his tongue poking out the corner of his mouth as it had the night before; a grin as he flipped through the pages and found something he liked; a cock of the head as he considered the merits of another drawing. His face, as far as she could interpret the alien features, seemed rather open and amiable. At one point a breeze lifted the tails of his bright orange mask, and they streamed out behind him before settling back gently on his shell, making him appear almost poetic for a moment. She tried to catch of glimpse of what he was drawing, but the gargoyle never angled the sketchbook in her direction.

After a while, even the novelty of observing a living gargoyle could not stand against watching him do nothing but shift in place and draw things she could not see. She began to feel a little bored, and her hip started with the dull ache it had when she gave it either too little movement or too much. She wished he would do something a little more interesting, another mock battle, some acrobatics, a few basic calisthenics would do. A tiger in a zoo is arresting if one has never seen one before, but interest starts to wane if it just lies on a rock all day. She could have used a little bouncing around.

But the gargoyle gave her no satisfaction that night. He departed a few minutes later with his sketchbook and implements, leaping from roof to roof until he was out of sight. He left Mrs. Parr not entirely pleased, but still intrigued and eager to see more of him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

The gargoyle became an established if only occasional visitor to the roof next door, and Mrs. Parr began to make a point of waiting up for as long as she could on the chance that she might see him. Though he never again came two nights in a row, he did show himself as often as once a week. Most of the time he drew, but sometimes he read (comic books, of all things), or cavorted and flew about the roof for no other apparent reason than to revel in his own superb, enthusiastic athleticism.

In time she considered opening the window and revealing herself to him, with all the possible directions such an action might take. She invented little scenarios about how he would first react to her. He would be startled, of course, but soon his natural exuberance would take over and he'd come to her, introducing himself and asking questions, eager and inquisitive. She could also see him dismayed at being suddenly apprehended; his secret existence revealed. He would stand his ground uneasily, suspicious yet curious, like one of the half feral cats in the ally. Or perhaps he would meet a perceived threat with a threat of his own, and leap across the ally to menace her. Either way, she would remain calm and gradually win his trust, speaking gently to him, even charming him. She never dared to actually attempt catching his attention for fear of simply frightening him off and ending his visits to the roof.

She continued to wonder about his origins and persisted in favoring her idea of living gargoyles, but she wanted to test her theory. She decided to make a trip to the library to see if she could discover him. There must be dozens of books on local architecture, she reasoned, and it was very likely that at least one would have a photo of the gargoyle, if indeed that was what he was. Did he need the wings or not? The urge to know grew more pressing over the next few days, but it also occurred to her that this venture would not be a simple matter. It would require a good deal of planning, logistics, and courage on her part. She had not left her building for more than a year, and she no longer clearly remembered where the library was or how to get there. She could not ask Denise for help, for then she would have to explain herself, and yet she did not want to go alone. She realized that somehow in the past year she had grown afraid of the city in which she had lived her entire life.

In the end, she marshaled her courage and forced herself to go, skirting as quickly as she could past the flophouse, finding the nearest subway and daring to hold up the line for tokens by asking directions. She was surprised and pleased to find that, after all, her body remembered how to manage the swaying subway car, and her feet recalled how to shuffle and stomp among the thick crowds on the sidewalks.

She eventually reached the library and self-consciously gave the young man at the information desk a story about how she was helping her granddaughter with an art project and needed a book with pictures of New York's gargoyles. Would he be able to show her the way to any such books? The young man regarded her under half lowered eyelids, superior and bored, and she realized that she had not needed to make up an excuse. He seemed neither surprised nor curious about her request, just slightly irritated that she had the effrontery to interrupt the nothing he had been doing._ (The things I have to put up with, _his manner said_, the peasants I must tend to!_)

He suggested that, if it were only pictures she needed, she do an Internet search instead of leafing through books. When she admitted that she did not know how to search the Internet, he brought her to a computer and, with more patience than his supercilious eyelids hinted at, showed her how to do a search.

Mrs. Parr found a wealth of gargoyles in all possible shapes, more than she had thought even the vastness of New York City could tuck into its rooftops. Gargoyles in the shapes of monkeys, dogs, and felines, with many more shaped like no creature that had ever existed. Not all had wings, so that answered that question. Here was one fashioned like a snorting alligator; here a jaunty, sly frog holding a book; here a rather elegant and naturalistic pelican. There was one, unbelievably, in the shape of a human infant - bald head and shoulders of dusky stone thrusting from the corner of its building, a rattle clenched in a little fist held against its face. Its eyes were squinted shut and its cheeks drawn up in a rigor mortis of displeasure; the mouth a rigid, grimacing oval, fashioned by its maker into a never ending, soundless bawl, as repulsive as any of the others.

She found one at last in the shape of a tortoise, which was not an exact likeness, but close enough. She decided that this was her gargoyle. She printed a copy of him and made her way home, hip aching but satisfied in her theories and proud of her accomplishment. She felt something like an adventurer at the end of a long journey, thrilled with the experience and suffused with success, but also tired from her labors and glad to be returning to a safe harbor.

She was appalled at the smell of her apartment when she arrived – a smell of stale bodies inhabiting stale, old air – the smell of an old person's house. She remembered this same smell from being dragged to visit elderly relatives as a girl, and she had sworn, with all the ignorance and arrogance that youth can muster, that if she ever came to this she would kill herself. Well, here she was, come to it, though she was hardly about to kill herself. But still, this wouldn't do. She flushed with embarrassment at the thought that Denise had come here many times and had surely smelled this, but had never said anything.

Mrs. Parr unlocked her windows and wrestled them open, beginning with the one from which she had first seen the gargoyle. For the first time in more than a year, a hint of fresh air drifted into the apartment. Smells from the ally below and city beyond also wandered in – the cloying scent of rotting garbage (lots of fruit down there today), the fowl concoctions of unnamable liquids that made up the puddles and damp spots in the ally and the exhaust of a million cars. Cutting through it all was the singular, damp, mossy scent of the steam that periodically billowed around the edges and through the small holes of the manhole covers. She never knew exactly what caused so much underground steam that it occasionally had to erupt from the manhole covers as if from the spout of some giant subterranean teapot.

All these odors mingled almost overpoweringly with the hint of late spring air, but she had learned long ago that you had to take the bad with the good. At least it was better than that other smell. As off putting as some of the odors were, they seemed to her at that moment to be the scents of lives in progress.

She began to insert herself more vigorously into the gargoyle's life as the days passed. She became his friend, his confidante, and over time, she invented a dozen different lives for him. She became a party to the secret dramas and wars he and his kind engaged in throughout the city at night. Her apartment was his refuge, a place of companionship and peace, an escape for a little while from his precarious life and his enemies, for enemies he certainly had. His scars were testament to that. At times she even invented a younger version of herself and shared in his adventures.

Most of the time she knew her daydreams were laughable. If Denise ever found out that Mrs. Parr spent her days of late distracted by a fantasy world, she would have patronized her horribly or would have been outright alarmed. But Mrs. Parr also realized that as long as she kept it all safe in her own head, it didn't matter. What other people did not know could not hurt her. Her day-to-day life for too long had been receding into a kind of dull limbo, with nothing to do but drift around her apartment, trying to read or watch TV with increasingly slippery concentration, and to worry sometimes, on the days when her head was clearer, that her mind was not what it once had been. The gargoyle was a blessing, really. He was something lively and interesting. He was a solid, reassuring presence in her spotty recent memory. He _stuck_.

Sometimes, when the gargoyle was in an energetic mood and she watched him spin and leap and wield his weapons with stunning, effortless power, she thought it was a pity about him. If he had been a man there would have been much to admire. The thought sometimes crept up on her that perhaps there was much to admire regardless, but her mind always veered away before it caught hold. She could not travel that far into the inconceivable. The thought had to remain hovering at the fringes of her awareness, humming at the edges of her nerves, not consciously rejected because it was not even acknowledged.

One day, lost in a particularly intriguing conversation with the gargoyle, her buzzer sounded. She ignored it, unwilling to lose her train of thought, and it rang again. After the third time whoever it was seemed to have given up, but a few minutes later there was a knock at her door and a voice called, "Mrs. Parr? Mrs. Parr, are you in?" Then, chillingly, a key turned in her lock, and a dark woman she did not immediately recognize entered her apartment.

"Judy?" Mrs. Parr said. The name came out as half a greeting of pleasure, half a puzzled guess. She had not seen her old coworker in many years, but if that was she, how did she happen to have a key…

The other woman looked confused for a moment, and then said, "No, Mrs. Parr, it's me, Denise. I'm sorry for barging in on you, but when you didn't answer, I thought maybe something happened -"

"How did you get in here?" Mrs. Parr demanded, cutting her off.

"You gave me a key, in case of an emergency. Don't you remember?"

No, actually, she remembered doing no such thing. And she still did not know this woman who was acting so familiar with her, although it seemed she should.

The encounter left her irritable and uneasy, prodded with anxieties she could not name. After the other woman left with an expression of grave concern on her face, Mrs. Parr spent the remainder of the day wandering restlessly around her apartment, unable to sit still for long. She dusted and cleaned a little, picking up her possessions and looking them over, running her fingers over the ones that were too big to lift. She handled this and that, remembering where she had bought this piece, how long she had owned that one. She made an English muffin and some coffee in her new shatterproof kettle, more because she felt like she needed to eat than because she was hungry. She sought reassurance in the simple, domestic activities. _See_, she wanted then to tell her, _everything is in order. Everything is okay._

Towards the late afternoon she finally settled wearily on the sofa, intending to doze off for just a few minutes, and awoke suddenly a long time later in the blurry grey hours just before dawn with her mind fixed on the gargoyle. She realized with a guilty start that she had not thought of him once since the other woman had left. After so many weeks of having him the chief object of her thoughts, she did not want to start forgetting him. It was one thing to lose the past - that was already gone. It was another thing altogether to begin losing the present.

She went to the window and looked out. The neighboring roof, where the shadows were fading from black to grey, was devoid of life. Something inside her was certain the gargoyle had been there, and she had missed him. She could feel in her skin. Visits from the gargoyle were rare enough that she could not afford to miss one.

Disappointed and angry, she impulsively threw open her door and made her way up the back stairs to her own roof. If she could not see him this night, then at least she could share something of the same space and see the things he saw.

Once on her roof she perceived, all at once, what drew him to this place. Her neighborhood occupied a spot unique in the city, directly between the two great bridges that rose, graceful as swans and still as mountains, and reached across the vast expanse of the murky East river and into the grey stone wilds of Brooklyn. The only buildings before her were single story warehouses sprawling to the edge of the water. Standing far above them, she had a clear and perfect view of the length and breadth of the wide river, the bridges, and the remote countries beyond.

Mrs. Parr stood and marveled at the view as the sky lightened, until the first pencil thin sliver of yellow appeared on the horizon. She watched the sun rise, a little surprised at its swift ascent. Did the world really spin that fast? She imagined herself clinging to the surface of a top as it careened about the universe. When the sun rose high enough to fully catch the river in its sight, it set the water ablaze, and the river in turn reflected the fire, bouncing it back ten fold to a gold and orange sky. The river and sky, drab warehouses and mighty bridges, all awash with a golden haze. The very particles of air seemed charged with light and fire.

Standing in the midst of it, Mrs. Parr felt for a moment transformed, and inexplicably grateful. _This is what he sees. This is_ how _he sees. _And _this, too, is me,_ although that made no sense. She felt she understood him then, a part of him anyway, but understanding a part made her suddenly impatient and dissatisfied with her unsubstantiated daydreams. She wanted to know the truth of him, the whole of him. To really know. _Who are you? How did you come to be? What would you think of me?_ And most importantly, _What have you now become to me?_


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Only once did Mrs. Parr. Come face to face with the gargoyle. It was on a night when she braved the early evening darkness to buy milk for her coffee, unwilling to wait for daylight.

She saw almost no one on her three-block journey to the small convenience store. Her neighborhood offered little to draw outsiders in or the inhabitants out. Even the nocturnal souls who thrived on the night and profited themselves in the darkness made their way to more promising locations when night fell.

When the sudden commotion snatched her up, it all happened too fast for Mrs. Parr to react in any way except stunned surprise. She heard a female voice scream as she reached the mouth of the last ally she had to cross, and then a young girl, no more than twenty years old, bolted from its dark recesses and fled down the sidewalk. Hard on her heels came a man, veering around Mrs. Parr and running in the opposite direction. She caught a glimpse of blood and an anxious, fixed expression on his face, his gaze intent on some point in the distance, as if there was a very important train pulling away and he could not afford to miss it.

And then came the gargoyle himself, nearly careening into her before he checked himself and stepped back. His eyes were fierce and narrow under the bright orange strip of mask, though in an instant they widened in surprise. They stared each other in the face for several seconds of stillness and silence, and then he said, "Please don't scream, lady. I hate that."

She forced her head in to a jerky little shake of acquiescence, her very breath arrested in her lungs. Scream? She could not bring herself to speak right now, never mind scream. Taking in the sight of her, the gargoyle's expression softened. The corners of his mouth spread into a small grin.

"And breathe," he encouraged softly.

" 'kay," she gasped, her held in breath rushing out around the word.

The gargoyle glanced up and down the street, apparently trying to spot either the man or the woman, but neither was in sight. He sighed and looked back to Mrs. Parr. "You okay?"

" 'kay," she managed again.

He made a sound like the beginning of a laugh and abruptly vanished down the ally's gullet, too swift and too shadowed for her eyes to follow. She heard the brief metallic rattle of his weight landing on a fire escape, and then nothing.

Only now did she start shaking as pent-up adrenalin drained from her body in a sudden flood. She trembled as she walked to her door and worked her key in the lock, but not from fear of dangers in the street and certainly not fear of him. She was certain the gargoyle would watch over her until she was safely inside.

Mrs. Parr now had a voice to add to the figure. It was not the sort of voice she had expected from him, but after she heard it, she could not recall what else she had expected. She could now match him with no other voice but the one she had heard. It had been young and husky, full of warmth and life. She counted the words he had said to her – eleven – and replayed them in her mind. And she added more words, new sentences spoken to her in that voice's timber, new directions to take her imagined conversations with him.

She fell a little in love with him after the incident in the ally. Add 'hero in the night' to his list of attributes. Who knew such people existed? Like Zorro. Like Batman. Maybe he was part of a clandestine society who guarded the city in secret, and as well as they could, for they were few. Or maybe he had rebelled against his kind and defended humans against the wishes of his people. She saw him defying convention, taking an interest in the human world even though it was forbidden, his curiosity drawing him close to human concerns, his sympathy and strength leading him to defend the helpless. She liked the idea, and ran with it.

One day, with a great leap of faith, she stopped veering away from the attraction that pricked at the edges of her mind and confronted the unthinkable and unnatural head on. She wondered what it would feel like to kiss him. She tried the same ritual she had used as a girl, before she had ever kissed a boy, kissing her pillow or her own hand to get in some practice, imagining it returned. She imagined herself as a woman fifty years younger, or forty, even thirty would do (in her opinion, she had held onto her good looks for longer than most women could manage). She cupped her palm around her mouth, her skin dry and papery against her lips. She eased into it, recalling the feel of another mouth, of hands gently taking hold of her head, a tongue tentatively brushing hers…

Her heart suddenly contracted, desire erupting so intensely it physically rocked her, and she broke it off, flushed and ashamed. It was too much, too absurdly close to real.

But she kept returning to that moment as days went by, compelled by an irresistible urge to relive the feelings – the imagined kiss and the real emotions that accompanied it. It had been so long since she had felt anything like this, and she helplessly craved those sensations again, whatever their source. She gradually became used to the idea, admitted it, accepted it, and surrendered to it – she loved an inhuman creature seemingly many years her junior, whose relationship with her was entirely the product of her own imagination. That seemed to sum it up, so let it be.

Things were easier after that. She and the gargoyle became secret lovers for many weeks, hiding from both his people and hers. She wondered at first how it would work - his strange armored body and hers, how the pieces would fit - but after some practice they figured it out nicely. After having gone so long with nothing, being the object of attention from an exotic, powerful, ardent young male (for in her mind her was indeed ardent), left her thrilled and genuinely happy. Mrs. Parr had lived long enough to know every possible variation and gradient of love – from attraction to crush to passion, from obsession, need and hunger, to tenderness and companionship. While she was aware that she did not actually know him well, she was also aware, with a certainty born of a lifetime of experience, that what she did know she loved as sincerely as she had ever loved anything in her life.

She eventually decided, after much debate, to try to reach him in reality. Not to become lovers, for she knew that was flying too high – she was not yet so far gone that she had forgotten her real age – but simply to offer friendship. The possibility of really engaging with him, of having real conservations, could more than compensate for the loss of her fantasy love life.

She wrote him a letter that she hoped was sufficiently appealing, interesting, and amusing, not needy or desperate. With her with heart pounding nervously like the first time she had ever approached a boy she liked, she left it on her fire escape, weighted down with an old flowerpot. She found some plain white paper and wrote 'LOOK HERE' in black marker with an arrow pointing downward and taped it to her window. The gargoyle should see that the next time he made an appearance on the other roof. It was hardly a sure plan, leaving a lot to chance and luck, but she could think of no other way except opening her window and calling to him when she saw him again, and she did not want to do that. She wanted to make an overture but leave it up to him.

Of course the dark woman noticed the sign and asked her about it. Mrs. Parr had not thought to prepare a lie and had no answer ready. She felt irritated that this woman had barged into her home and demanded to know what she was doing - nosey creature. She snapped at the dark woman when she tried to see what the sign was pointing to and tossed her out.

She had very seldom left her apartment since the night she saw the gargoyle in the street, for as time went by she found herself increasingly suspicious of the faces she encountered and uncertain of finding her way back – lately it frequently took her several tries to locate her apartment after going to the laundry room in the basement. She disliked the dark people (or was it just one person?) who came to her door, checking up (spying) on her and asking questions. These people who acted like she should recognize them, but most of the time she did not. "It's Denise, Mrs. Parr," said with a condescending smile and shifty eyes darting around her home. The name meant nothing.

If the gargoyle ever noticed her sign, he ignored it, or did not realize it was meant for him. If he ever came again to his favorite rooftop, Mrs. Parr slept through it, and the letter remained untouched on her fire escape. She let it stay there until time and weather rendered it stained, soggy and illegible, before she took both letter and sign and threw them away, more bitterly disappointed than the matter should have allowed.

She thought that maybe he already had human friends who absorbed his attention, a human lover, even. She had managed to fall in love with a gargoyle - another could, as well. She was not so conceited to think that she was unique in the world. Maybe he had found that young woman he had saved in the ally, talked to her, and she had slowly overcome her fear and revulsion, just as Mrs. Parr had. Maybe that was why he had not been to the roof for so long. A young thing like him would want other young people, after all. There was nothing to interest him in talking to an old woman.

_Well, fine then. Kiss my wrinkly ass._

She occupied herself with jealous fantasies, nursing her wounds and reopening them as the variations played out. Sometimes she was young and grieved for a love unreciprocated, and sometimes she was her actual age and merely sad for the loss of a friend. She won him back, or lost him forever, or sacrificed herself in a grand, noble gesture and made him feel horribly guilty. She moved on and met someone else, or resigned herself to a life alone. She remained friends with him and became a smile on his face that his new lover would wonder about, or he realized his mistake and swore to do better by her. She took him back, with tears of gratitude on both sides, and he proved as good as his word in the years following that one night of astonishingly good make-up sex.

But the gargoyle had yet to return in the flesh. Time passed until finally more than two months, in her estimation, had gone by since she had seen him, the longest stretch since he had first appeared. She gradually dropped her jealous musings over phantom lovers and began to genuinely worry. He had really been away too long this time. Something had happened. Something was wrong. She thought of the copious scars on his body and feared for his life.

She took to watching the news, on the off chance that he had been discovered, alive or dead, and handed over to the media. A being like him would certainly be national news. She slept on the couch so that she might be nearer to the window should he come, and waited by the window for as long as she could stay awake. She prayed for his safety and bargained with God. She would ask for nothing, want nothing from the gargoyle for herself, if only she could see him once more and know he was yet alive in the world.

The dark woman came and went, always prying, always asking questions. How do you feel? Have you eaten? Did you take your pills? Why don't you sleep in your bed anymore? What are you doing? Do you know who I am? No, most days Mrs. Parr did not know, but she began to suspect that this dark woman, with her incessant questions, was maybe one of the gargoyle's hidden enemies searching for evidence, bribing her with food (maybe the food was drugged), stealing her key to let herself in, and snooping in her cabinets and closets. She always tried to throw her out, but the woman was stubborn. Mrs. Parr frequently had to resort to threatening her with the police to get her to leave.

The one benefit to the dark woman's harassment was that it must mean that the gargoyle was still alive and free. Perhaps this was why he stayed away. His enemies now haunted this neighborhood, and they were growing bolder. This, she decided, was the most likely reason for his absence, and she was proud of her logic when the thought occurred to her. It brought her some relief to think it was this and not some accident or attack she would never know about. Under these circumstances, it would be better if she never saw him again. But she still waited by the window, just in case.

________________________________________________________________________

The last time Mrs. Parr saw the gargoyle confirmed all her fears. She woke from a restless sleep in the middle of the night and returned automatically to her vigil by the window before she was even fully awake. For a moment she was completely startled to actually see him there, after so many nights of staring out at a barren roof.

He was engaged, as he had been the first time she had seen him, whirling about the roof in a fury of activity with his weapons drawn. But this time he was not alone, and he was fighting for his life.

Human forms surrounded him, or at least they might have been human. She could not tell for certain, for they were covered completely in black – black all over their bodies and black hoods on their heads, which covered even their eyes. There were maybe five or six of them, moving too swiftly for her to count, their inky forms lost in the shadows as soon as she glimpsed them. They all had weapons – some with swords, others with implements she could not name – and they pressed the gargoyle from all sides. Except for the clash of weapons, they fought in eerie, deadly silence.

Mrs. Parr struggled to open the window with shaking hands. _Why had he come back? He must not have known, after all. He didn't know they were here. He came for me…no…no…that's not right…_A chilly blast of late autumn air enveloped her as she wrestled the window open and leaned out. "Hey!" she cried. "Hey! Get away from him! I'll call the police! Get out! I'm calling the police!"

One of the dark forms checked and turned in her direction. She recognized at once her foolishness and her peril. She could read its intention as clearly as if it had spoken. _No witnesses_.

She shrank from the window in terror as the black thing leapt across to her fire escape, knowing it was already too late, certain in that moment of her own death. And then, miraculously, the gargoyle was there, beating the black thing away. There was a sound like the crack of a bat against a baseball (_just like Dimaggio at Yankee Stadium, right on the sweet spot, just like Dimaggio_), and she saw with sickening clarity the gargoyle's wooden weapon indent the black thing's skull a good inch through the hood. The creature suddenly relaxed all over and slipped rather gently from her fire escape. Mrs. Parr found herself looking into the gargoyle's eyes, gleaming and desperate from the battle.

"Stay down," he ordered harshly, slamming the window shut as yet another dark form attacked him from behind. She crawled to the other side of her apartment, as far away from any window as she could get, and huddled in a corner for many minutes. But she could hear nothing of the fight outside with her window shut, and she realized that if the gargoyle vanished again, she would never know whether he had defeated his enemies or been taken by them. She forced herself to crawl painstakingly back. Taking the windowsill in her fingers, she raised herself up and cautiously peered over the edge.

She was just in time to see him, the last one standing. A couple of prone bodies lay at his feet, and the rest she could not see. He was bent over, catching his breath, plainly drained. She wondered if he had killed them all, and if he had, if it had been at least in part to protect her.

After several deep breaths, the gargoyle straightened and looked about. Mrs. Parr saw his face clearly as his glance took in her window, and his expression was neither triumphant nor satisfied, only weary to the soul. Her heart suddenly ached with pity. She wanted more than anything to go to him, to offer comfort - afraid for him and a little afraid _of_ him. She felt certain that he had killed, readily and easily, and that it had not been the first time. But it had cost him, it seemed, more profoundly than exhaustion and the damages to his body could reckon.

He left her then, leaping to the adjacent roof, gaining speed as he went, until he was quickly out of sight. She knew he would not be back. Mrs. Parr sank to the floor and quietly began to weep, overwhelmed with relief that at least he was alive. And full of gratitude for her own life, and sorrow that he had had to pay for it, and most of all grief that he was gone.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

There were no bodies on the roof the next morning, no police cars in the street when Mrs. Parr ventured outside. The gargoyle's enemies were apparently as secretive as the gargoyle himself. They left no trace. Perhaps he had not killed them after all, or perhaps someone else had come before the night was over and cleared away their dead.

She went into the ally where the one had fallen, half expecting to find a black clad body lying twisted on the ground. There was no body, but she did find something else. Lying by a dumpster, some pages torn and stained with muck but mostly intact, was the gargoyle's sketchpad. She picked it up carefully, almost reverently, smoothing the wrinkled pages into place until she came to the cover. She returned with it to the sidewalk and, since the weather was being kind that morning, began to walk. She slowly turned the pages as she ambled around the block, studying each drawing. She hoped to learn something more of him and his life, something definite to go along with her fantasies.

She found a number of sketches in colored pencil of young women dressed as superheroes, whose powers evidently included being able to levitate their rather large breasts. She shook her head at these, unable to figure out if she was amused or not. Young males – the same everywhere no matter what the species. There were also male superheroes, though they paled in comparison to the woman both in the number of portraits and variety of poses. She saw sketches obviously drawn from her neighboring rooftop – of the East River, the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, and one perspective that took in both bridges at once. She was delighted to find several drawings of other gargoyles in their stone form, and she wondered if they, too, were alive and if they were friends of his.

There was one magnificent piece, a double spread drawn from the top of the tallest of buildings, with the city laid out like a galaxy beneath his feet. He had somehow managed to capture the entirety of the city all in one go. Her eyes were drawn down through the canyons of skyscrapers. She could actually discern, even from this perilous height, trash in the alleys, cigarette butts and Blimpies bags in the gutter. And she saw, immediately below her, the peregrine falcons that she had always heard lived in the city, but had never seen. Everywhere she caught glimpses of New York's humanity; through windows, in doorways, in the streets and parks, in bodegas and alleys and restaurants. She saw in his city the lonely, the dirty, the hopeless, the wicked, the monstrously violent, the unexpectedly generous, the strange, the clever, the insane, the genius, the brightly courageous, the enormously funny, and the arrestingly beautiful. She knew little about art. She did not know how he had managed to trick the perspective into revealing a bottle in the gutter and everything else all the way up to a falcon on the wing with equal clarity, but he had, from filth and blood to improbable, transcendent light.

He has signed his name to this small masterpiece: Michelangelo. _Oh, I'm sure,_ she thought. Then again, perhaps it really was his name, either given or chosen for himself. As far as she was concerned he was worthy of it. She likes the way he saw things, the way he could take his visions and with simple charcoal pencils translate them to paper.

Mrs. Parr began to flip more quickly through the pages, searching for some sign of herself in his life. She told herself it was unlikely, even as her need for his acknowledgement of her existence and her disappointment at not finding it grew with each turn of the page.

She did eventually find herself, after a fashion, at last. It was a cartoony self portrait of the gargoyle on her next door roof, playfully flexing a bicep. Across the way a pair of binoculars telescoped a ridiculously long way from her window, obscuring everything of the person holding them except a pair of hands at one end and two wide, bulging eyes in place of lenses at the other. A caption reading 'ENJOYING THE VIEW?!?' was printed in big block letters across the top. She had to laugh at this, flushed with embarrassment. _Oh, lord, he knew about the binoculars_.

And that was it. The rest of the sketchbook had nothing to do with her. _Ah, well, it's something, anyway._

She was surprised to find that her key would not turn in the lock when she tried to return home. Annoyed, she wondered if she had the wrong building. They all looked nearly alike. She tried the next one with the same result. A little alarmed, she stepped to the sidewalk, looking up and down, searching for some landmark with which to get her bearings. She could not remember which number she lived at. Sixty-four or forty-five seemed familiar, but these buildings were numbered in the hundreds. She couldn't be that lost; she had only gone around the block, she was certain.

She walked to the next corner, noticing nothing familiar, and turned up the next street in a rising panic, trying the buildings one by one. Her hip had begun to ache from all the walking, and she was plagued by an increasing need to use the bathroom. After a time she began to ring buzzers as well as trying the various doors, asking anyone who answered if they knew where she lived, if she could use the bathroom, if they could help her, if they knew where Michelangelo was.

In the end, Mrs. Parr lost control of her bladder before she found someone to aid her. She stood helplessly on the steps of some strange building as warm urine trickled uncontrollably down her legs. She sat down slowly where she was, careful of her painful hip, and huddled up, clutching the sketchbook to her breast, nearly weeping in humiliation and fear and anger.

She did not know how long she sat – long enough for the pain in her hip to double and redouble from sitting on the hard stone – when a voice called, "Mrs. Parr! Mrs. Parr!"

She realized the voice was calling her. A dark woman, almost as black as the things that had hunted the gargoyle, approached her. "Mrs. Parr, it's me, Denise." She did not trust the voice; it was too rich, too ingratiating, trying too hard to be kind. But the woman's hands were on her, soft yet irresistibly strong, helping her to rise. "What happened?" the dark woman said. "Oh, you poor thing, I'll get you home. I'm gonna call somebody who can help you, okay? Don't worry, I'll stay with you."

More strangers in her home, asking questions. They demanded her name. Did she know her address? The date and year? Her late husband's name? She tried to answer that last one. "Michael," she mumbled, and then said with more certainty, "it's Michael." The strangers looked to the dark woman, who shook her head.

They directed the rest of their questions to the dark woman, talking about her. "She has good days and bad days," was the reply. They asked about any living relatives, her Social Security and Medicare benefits, and who, if anyone, had power of attorney.

Mrs. Parr asked, then ordered them to leave, but they only gave her empty reassurances and ignored her.

"Can I see that book you're holding?" the dark woman asked suddenly. "I've never seen it before."

"No!" Mrs. Parr cried. She could not have been more horrified if they had asked her to strip naked.

"Do you draw, Mrs. Parr?" one of the others asked. Patronizing, oily ingratiation. She knew they meant no kindness. They were all the gargoyle's enemies, searching for him. She would never let them see the book.

"I'm not going to hurt it," said the dark woman, "I just want to see." She put a hand on the sketchbook and gently tried to pull it away.

Mrs. Parr couldn't believe this. Hadn't she clearly said no? Overcome with outrage and desperate to protect the gargoyle, she gripped the book with all her strength. She sought for some way to drive the dark woman back. She recalled her parents and their language of easy contempt for people like the dark woman (_nothing wrong with it back then, oh no – back then you were free to say whatever you wanted_) - words she had learned and eventually learned not to use. She called them up now and hurled them, screaming with hostility into the dark woman's face.

"_I said don't touch it, you goddamn nigger!"_

The dark woman let go. There was a moment of stunned silence, and then the others quickly turned to the dark woman, consoling. "It's not her. It's the Alzheimer's talking."

Staring defiantly at the dark woman, Mrs. Parr saw an old, deep, implacable anger stirring in her eyes, before being quelled and mastered by a show of pity. "I know…I know. She doesn't know what she's saying. God, I'm sorry, Mrs. Parr."

Mrs. Parr felt her own face pucker and crumple up like a small child about to cry, and she broke. She lowered her head and hid her face in her hands, sobbing.

…………………………………………………………………………..

She came back to herself, unsure of where she was and how long it had been since that terrible morning in her apartment. She was lying in a bed in a spare, bleak room with worn, once white walls. An old beige dresser with a television on it stood at the wall past the foot of the bed, with a nightstand and a small lamp by the side. To her left was a setup identical to her own; the other bed's occupant motionless under the small mound of blankets. There was a curtain between the two beds that could be drawn for semi-privacy, although it was now pulled open. A powerful odor of antiseptic and bleach permeated the air, but not enough to completely cover the stench of urine and diarrhea and illness.

She suddenly understood, with terrifying clarity, where she was and what her future held. She would never leave this place. She was going to languish alone in this desolate nursing home, enduring the indignity of perfunctory basic care, until she finally died. Even worse, the disease that was eating at her mind would eventually consume her, leaving everything that could be identified as Mrs. Parr effectively dead even before the end, with her caretakers only waiting for the formality of the body to follow suit.

In the next bed, her fellow resident began to whimper – a small, despairing sound of suffering and loss. Mrs. Parr clamped her jaw shut to keep from joining in, but knew it was only a matter of time before her own voice matched the other in accompaniment.

"I'm right here," said a voice, warm and husky, so real it seemed to vibrate in her ear as much as in her mind. A riot of color rose in her vision and blotted out the drab room – bright orange and living green, a wash of gold ricocheting between river and sky. But no, none of this was real.

"It doesn't matter. I'm here."

She felt the gargoyle's arms around her, and she was young again and her body supple. She could mold herself easily to his hard chest and entwine her legs with his. They were back in her first apartment, just a small studio with a narrow twin bed, but that was okay. That made it easier to lie close. She closed her eyes, allowing her existence with the gargoyle overlay her existence in this dismal room. She could feel the both the thin pillow under her head and the gargoyle's muscled arm, but the gargoyle was the stronger presence. He was right, what did it matter? Like that old song said – _Whatever gets you through the night, 'salright._ She had never been a high maintenance or demanding person, and she had long been used to making a little go a long way. For as long as this lasted, this would do. There was relief here, and comfort, and – in the end - such love.

She drifted, and let it carry her.

_end_


End file.
